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Classical Confucianism And Daoism Essay

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According to Professor Vincent Shen, human being in the postmodern society has been facing two major problems: mental nihilism and environmental crisis (171). And as he wisely pointed out, the teaching of classical Confucianism and Daoism provides us with a solution: return to simplicity and reconstruct the harmonic relationship for both mind and environment. Furthermore, generosity towards many others, as a dynamic tension inside both classical Confucianism and Daoism, can be practiced through strangification. And this generous strangification towards many others, is the source of practical value in classical Confucianism and Daoism (295). In this reading report, I will try to show my critical reflection on Professor Shen’s wisdom in Chapter 8 and 13 of his anthology.
For classical Confucianism represented by Confucius, reciprocity in social relationships is the fundamental phase of …show more content…
Within the development of both teachings, this generosity has always manifested through the strangification, from self-centrism to human-centrism, and then from human-centrism to infinitely many others. Moreover, as each other’s “others”, there also exists mutual strangification between classical Confucianism and Daoism. Although they seem to start with different perspectives, in fact, they always enrich each other. Specifically, without social harmony, human can only concentrates on themselves, then no environmental harmony will be concerned. And without the environmental harmony inspired by Dao, inner fulfilment which functions as the base of social harmony cannot be achieved, and the society itself will lose its base of existence. Ultimately, the spirit of generosity coheres them together, towards the whole universe, in order to achieve the adequate harmony among all

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